Pelosi the Appeaser

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tells the New York Times that the way to beat Trump is not through impeachment or championing progressive causes. To win, Democrats have to be more friendly to "centrists" - which is neoliberal-speak for the donor and corporate class which owns her organization.

If you cower, they (the mythical center of the electorate) will come.

Remember how well that smarmy strategy worked out when Neville Chamberlain tried to appease Hitler by granting him permission to invade neighboring countries in the belief the rest of Europe (and capitalist interests) would be spared?  Even more recently, remember how well that worked out when Pelosi's party thought it would be a great idea to run Hillary Clinton in 2016 and destroy Bernie Sanders at the same time? The polls and the pundits certainly thought she'd be a shoo-in to beat Trump.

So let's double down on that winning strategy. If it doesn't work out, it will all be the fault of the Deplorables, again. If it doesn't work out, Nancy Pelosi personally will never have to suffer. Nor will the Democratic donor class, who are flusher with cash than ever thanks to Trump's tax cuts and their investments in his military machine and prison-industrial complex.

It's a toss-up as to whether Pelosi's main problem is corruption or senility, or a combination of the two, when she posits that only a boring centrist can win in 2020. This boring individual will win by such a stupendous margin that Trump will never be able to challenge the results. 

On the other hand, the results of a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren victory could not possibly be stupendous enough to physically scare Trump out of the White House. Only a Biden or a Buttigieg or maybe a Harris would triumph in a landslide, which would bury Trump forever and ever.

Glenn Thrush reports:

Sitting in her office with its panoramic view of the National Mall, Ms. Pelosi — the de facto head of the Democratic Party until a presidential nominee is selected in 2020 — offered Democrats her “coldblooded” plan for decisively ridding themselves of Mr. Trump: Do not get dragged into a protracted impeachment bid that will ultimately get crushed in the Republican-controlled Senate, and do not risk alienating the moderate voters who flocked to the party in 2018 by drifting too far to the left.
“Own the center left, own the mainstream,” Ms. Pelosi, 79, said.

Of course, Pelosi's version of center left actually skews more toward right of center. She neglects to mention that the "moderates" who did win their mid-term races were heavily bankrolled by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which refused financial aid to what she dismisses as the "exuberances"- including the victorious Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She also neglects to mention that such right-wing Democratic senators as Claire McCaskill and Heidi Heitkamp lost badly in their own bids for re-election, despite their soulless valiant efforts to appeal to the Mythical Center.  

The tacit message of the Times article is that if Sanders or Warren win, Trump will not go quietly. But he magically will go quietly if Biden wins. 

If you really want to dig right down to the center of the centrist Id, Pelosi doesn't even want a Democrat in the White House. She'd rather dance the triangulation tango with Trump for four more years. 

Pelosi is trying to gaslight the electorate at the same time she dog-whistles her reassurances to nervous Democratic Party donors, who have made no secret of the fact that they dread Sanders or Warren in the White House, because both these candidates threaten to unconscionably use their power to serve people who don't have has much money as the big donors and the corporate lobbyists do.

She claims that if Democrats would just cringe pragmatically and appease Trump now, he will be less nasty and dangerous, less likely to irrevocably poison the minds of the malleable against the Democrats during the primaries and the general election. She bizarrely calls this her "cold-blooded plan" for victory. I'll grant her the cold-blooded part. And I'll even compliment her for having one hell of an overdeveloped lizard brain to go along with all that ice in her veins.

Her strategy amounts to pretending to be scared and disgusted by the Trump administration in public, but being complicit with, and accommodating to, the Trump administration in private. Pelosi seems confident that the actual public is not reading about this cynical strategy in the Times, mostly because they probably can't afford the subscription, despite working several jobs. And if the bottom 80 percent or so of the reading public are perusing the Times, maybe Pelosi can instill the requisite doubt and fear into their psyches.  I doubt that she cares about anybody but her donors. The underlying message to her real constituents is that she's got their backs. She's cold-bloodedly pushing the scales. Hers and theirs.

One thing to keep in mind about many Times articles and op-eds is that they are essentially telegraphed messages from the rich to the rich. But in a show of egalitarianism, they are happy to offer the lesser people a tiny box with which to share their expertise (1500 characters or less) with their peers. If you are very lucky, your comment will be accepted by some mystery algorithm and make it into print. If you write from a centrist, pragmatic  point of view, a human moderator is very likely to award you a coveted golden "Times Pick" icon. This digital badge of honor is the equivalent of a jolt of dopamine, and will encourage you to write more centrist - and influential! - comments in the future.

The Appeasement Not Impeachment For Our Time Tango. 

*Update, 5/5: Boy, do I ever feel dope-amined. After suppressing my submitted comment on a Maureen Dowd column for about five hours last night, the moderators not only finally published it, they awarded it a coveted Times Pick! I must have subconsciously inserted some pragmatism in there - but more likely, they viewed it as a hook for all the self-avowed "centrists" in Timesland to digitally venture forth to set me straight, to insist that yes, they really do exist, and that befuddled old me must not let the Perfect be the Enemy of the Good. 

I have a bone to pick with Dowd's odd, but typically "insidery" characterization of Atty. Gen. Barr as a heretofore revered elder statesman in Washington, before Trump ruined his stellar reputation. How soon she and her corporate media cohort forget that it was Barr who orchestrated a pardon for (among others in the Iran-Contra scandal) Elliot Abrams - who has returned bigger and meaner than ever to spread more mayhem in Latin America via the ongoing US-led Venezuela coup attempt.

My comment is basically a rehash of the stuff I've been writing recently at Sardonicky, but I'll repost it here anyway:

No shock that D.C. insiders saw Barr as an upright member of the legal establishment, despite his crafting of pardons for war criminals under Bush Sr. In an ethical system, he would have been divested of the respectability badge decades ago.

  He served corrupt power then, and he serves corrupt power now. Yet somehow, Trump has suddenly and single-handedly corrupted an honorable man. This narrative speaks to the rot in the entire political establishment and the media's complicity in it.The media who so slavishly treated Mueller as a virtual Father of Our Country are now dissing him as a Deadbeat Dad for not sending Barr to the rhetorical naughty chair sooner. Why would he, when "tradition"  also dictates that no sitting president, not even Trump, can ever be taken to the legal woodshed and indicted?

Nancy Pelosi herself says impeachment is off the table, claiming that this Constitutional remedy would only embolden Trump to act brattier. In effect, she's the parent who yells a lot and threatens her kid with punishment but never follows through, which only emboldens the kid and his feral gang to act more brazen by the day.Meanwhile, in a Times interview, she says that only a mild centrist (not Sanders or Warren) can attract enough mythical centrist voters to beat Trump into enough of a quivering pulp to actually agree to vacate the White House when the time comes.

 It's Neville Chamberlain deja vu all over again.

"Appeasement Not Impeachment For Our Time." 

Season Three, Episode 97: "Bill the Barr-barian"

Attorney General Bill Barr appeared before Congress, got lashed with a wet noodle by Democrats, and then shockingly refused to return for another lashing. It is so utterly contemptible, they're taking firm action by calling him a criminal liar and threatening to hold him in contempt of Congress, for which there is no penalty whatsoever.

Stop the presses - and turn up the volume to high in the media echo chamber, because Barr called Bob Mueller "snippy" for criticizing Barr's misleading spin of the Mueller report. Barr must resign, immediately! And that is so crazy, because Billybob used to be Besties and Trump has totally come between them and maybe even broken them up forever.

How are Democratic leaders cynical? Count the ways, if you have the patience and the disposable time.
Me? I take the Clintonoid wing of the party's sage advice and do my own counting in very tiny, pragmatic, progressive, incremental baby steps.
One week it's blasting Nancy Pelosi's stupid "Pay-Go" rule as a device to punish people and make them feel grateful about going poor and dying prematurely as long as they can believe they'll be able live longer once they're reincarnated and the nasty old Republicans have been tamed.
Another week, it's reminiscing about Barack Obama's serial scolding of these same sick and indebted people during his eight-year term, a function which he continues to perform today from any number of safe, neutral international locations when he's not raking in $400,000 speaking fees and inking $50 million Netflix deals to produce content so inspiring that it tames 140 million paying subscribers into believing in a better life tomorrow.
And then it's on to Joe Biden, whose son Hunter recently quit his gig on the board of a corrupt Ukraine gas company for appearance's sake. And ad infinitum. The work is never done, because these horrible people are always doing something horrible and giving us something to kvetch about.

Today, for a huge change, let's talk about the latest Trump drama. Because keeping our minds off the fact that the Democrats are wholly complicit in the attempted coup in Venezuela even as they hypocritically wail that "Russia is invading us" is of the utmost pragmatic importance to them and to their electoral prospects.

The essential truth of the matter is that the corporate Dems love the Trump drama. Hating Trump certainly trumps loving the people who voted for them, and it helps them pretend that their "Love. Not Hate!" campaign theme actually means something They pragmatically pretend to be plodding through the bestselling Mueller report to figure out how best to investigate the conclusions of a two-year investigation conducted by some of the allegedly finest prosecutorial minds in the country. You can never investigate investigations enough. It's the best stalling method ever devised by the ruling class in order to maintain the Status Quo.
Nancy Pelosi says impeachment is off the table because "Trump is not worth it." It almost makes you think that impeachment is an awards show and Trump already has enough TV time. He's already the center of attention. Why spoil him even more by making him the center of the center of the attention? Nobody manipulates Madam Speaker, not even Donald Trump!

To be fair to Pelosi, at long last she is serendipitously honoring the wishes of the electorate, for whom punishing Trump's high crimes and misdemeanors is the least of their quotidian worries. Polls show that two-thirds of voters are not in favor of impeachment - about the same percentage as those who are in favor of Medicare For All.

Meanwhile, stenographers in the corporate media cover for Democrats by keeping the liberal consumer hatred churning at a constant furious boil during Perpetual Presidential Campaign season and spinning Hunter Biden's corruption as a product of the nasty Republican opposition. Their most commonly used technique is to pretend that everything was, if not as perfect as we might like, at least more tasteful and palatable before Trump and his minions appeared out of nowhere to spoil everything and overturn every beloved norm in the book.
New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie even preposterously claims in the sub-head of his latest column that "In America, no one is above the law - except the president and everyone who does wrong in his name."

Say what? Just making a quick mental list in the recommended pragmatic, incremental baby steps, I don't seem to remember any BP executive going to jail over the criminal negligence and cover-up of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Maybe I forgot that Wall Street bankers lost their jobs and pensions and bonuses, if not their physical freedom, for bilking their customers and fraudulently foreclosing on millions of mortgagors. Did George W. Bush and Dick Cheney answer for their war crimes and torture at The Hague, and I was napping the whole time?

Bouie writes:

On Wednesday, when Attorney General William Barr testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the Mueller report, he addressed lawmakers more as if he were a member of President Trump’s legal team than as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. Barr framed Trump’s actions as fully justifiable, even arguing that if the president feels an investigation is unfounded, he “does not have to sit there constitutionally and allow it to run its course.”
Whether out of sycophantic loyalty or a deep-seated belief in executive impunity, Barr has used his position to insulate the president from legal scrutiny. He has done everything in his power to downplay the impact of the special counsel’s investigation.
He did not hesitate, for example, to frame Robert Mueller’s findings as an exoneration of the president, despite a report that said otherwise. By itself, this gave Trump the appearance of vindication, as major media outlets declared him innocent of “collusion.”

My published response:

When Trump bragged that he could shoot somebody on 5th Avenue and get away with it, he wasn't kidding. Barr is only paying it forward. He's protecting not only Trump, but the entire teflon-coated ruling class racket.

Toadying to power is the norm. The standard slime that we've come to expect gets new coatings of toxic sludge practically every single day. Those with the power to clean it all up don't have the will. They seem to have left their soap and scrub-brushes at home.

Republicans are in full aggrieved paranoid mode, with Trump sending email blasts to his fans, urging them to show their $olidarity against those "radical socialist witch-hunting Democrats."

Democratic leaders, for their part, continue to rail against his regime's crimes while waffling on impeachment, preferring to limit their agenda to "We're Not Trump" and thereby downplaying policies that would actually make regular people's lives better. They seem to fear that the "socialist" label will scare their donors away.

  Plus, if they did their Constitutional duty and impeached Trump in campaign season, all the fun and profit of the #Resistance would disappear in the wink of an eye. It's better for ratings to keep Trump around for awhile. Think of the billions of dollars in revenue for the media and the corporations, which are truly running this spectacular show.

Meanwhile it's the poor who get fined or thrown in jail, just for existing ("loitering" or "vagrancy").

And let's not forget the draconian imprisonments of the two brave whistle-blowers and muckrakers, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange, who are locked up for exposing the high crimes of the Bushies and other teflon-coated minions of the exceptional United States Imperium. 

By the Time Neoliberalism Got To Woodstock

Sad news. The Golden Anniversary of Woodstock this August has been called off due to lack of interest by investors.

Billboard has the scoop:

Earlier today officials with Dentsu Aegis Network, which is funding the festival, released the following statement to Billboard:
“It’s a dream for agencies to work with iconic brands and to be associated with meaningful movements. We have a strong history of producing experiences that bring people together around common interests and causes which is why we chose to be a part of the Woodstock 50th Anniversary Festival.  But despite our tremendous investment of time, effort and commitment, we don’t believe the production of the festival can be executed as an event worthy of the Woodstock Brand name while also ensuring the health and safety of the artists, partners and attendees."

Like seemingly everything else, the misty-colored, mud-spattered, drug-addled legendary rock festival memories have all been reduced to a Brand.

The high-maintenance music stars slated to perform apparently would not have felt safe enough in a region of upstate New York known for its soaring poverty and unemployment rates. Even many of the highly educated adjunct professors with teaching gigs in the CUNY and SUNY systems are forced to work extra jobs and go on food stamps to survive. 

The 50-year reunion was not even going to be in Woodstock Proper, but much further north in Schuyler County's Watkins Glen, most famous for its stock car events. In other words, they were going to pave paradise and put in a Trump-voter parking lot. I am clutching my pearls just thinking about it. 

Even the original Woodstock wasn't held in Woodstock, but across the border from Ulster County in Sullivan County's Bethel. A couple of years ago, even Bethel was re-branded as the home of the Woodstock-inspired Bethel Woods concert series, where ticket prices are way out of the reach of actual residents and Woodstock hippie survivors of the economically depressed area. They won't even let you bring your own blanket or lawn chair, for crying out loud. You have to rent one of their custom chairs for 6 bucks - or if you're especially flush with cash, you can purchase a branded one online. Otherwise, get off their lawn. Unless you have $519 to park your butt on it for the 2019 summer season.

But since times are tough for even affluent people, they very generously allow you to bring one small Ziploc (branded) bag of foodstuffs from your home, along with one (1) bottle of water. No other migrant refreshments are allowed.

Over the past many decades, the main industry in the nearby actual Town of Woodstock has been B&Bs, craft shops, head shops, gourmet shops and trendy restaurants catering to the New York City crowd. Just a 90-minute drive from Manhattan, this bucolic area is also second (or third or fourth) home to quite a few movie and media stars and wealthy Big Apple residents. 

MSNBC's Chris Hayes actually has a primary home in the Woodstock area. This cable personality, who last week grotesquely compared Russiagate critics, like me, to the pro-slavery, anti-abolition activists of the pre-Civil War era, recently dished to the New York Times that he personally accompanies his kids to their private day school before his chauffeur picks him up and whisks him down to the broadcast studios where he can instill the proper fear and loathing of Russia into the minds of his dedicated viewing audience -- without ever having had to personally fight traffic!

Of course, this creeping gentrification is driving real estate and rental prices in the entire state sky-high. I just got word the other day that my absentee L.L.C. landlord would be raising my monthly rent by $250, effective in 30 days. If I don't sign a new lease within ten days, the month-to-month rent will be jacked up an extra $150 a month, for a total increase of 40 percent. I checked, and this unconscionable tactic to displace people is all perfectly legal in the aptly-named Empire State. Never mind that my apartment house was converted from a struggling local farmer's apple storage barn into affordable housing units about two decades ago with generous financial aid and tax breaks from both the state and federal governments. The catch is that it didn't have to be resold as affordable housing.

As the property manager unctuously explained to me: "Market Rate."

Timing is everything. With the state's landlord-friendly rent statutes due to expire next month, the new Democratic legislative majority is set to vote on a series of bills which would extend protections to renters statewide. But even if reforms do pass, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, great beneficiary of the predatory real estate industry that he is, could veto them. This is quite likely, given that since his election to a third term last year, he has abandoned both his pretend-pivot to populism and his threatened presidential run. 

It's not that I didn't have an inkling about what was in store for my complex's mainly working class residents, most of whom have been tenants here for many years and who have been getting their increase notices on a staggered schedule so as to discourage renter solidarity. As soon as the property resale closed last fall, the new owner summarily fired the long-time property manager without even one day's notice.

 "It's business, Hon," she told me the new owner's rep explained to her. (You'll forgive the digression from the core subject of this post, but I am feeling a tad grumpy today! I'll be writing a lot more on the housing rights struggle later.)

So back to the Woodstock Reunion That Wasn't and Probably Never Will Be. I have to say that I am absolutely crushed that Jay-Z and Miley Cyrus will not be making the trek to the boonies, and that New York state troopers will not be diverted from highway patrol and other public duties in order to guard their bodies and those of their compatriots as they keep out the local riffraff who don't have the price of the tickets because The Rents Are Too Damned High.

To no avail, concert promoters reached out to Live Nation and AFG in hopes of coming up with the necessary $20 million to keep the proposed festival site safe for the stars and the attendees from the Upper Ten Percent Demographic. But investors did not bite. Maybe it was because of Sunday's Simpsons episode, which poked such cruel, gleeful fun at the blight of upstate New York --and they suddenly became too afraid to either monetarily or physically venture forth into the Wilds. Or maybe they're just tapped out from bribing Joe Biden and giving ostentatious tax-deductible donations for the rebuilding of Notre-Dame.

But rest assured, because Jay-Z and Miley Cyrus and the rest of the cast have already been paid, to the tune of $30 million. It's the Market, stupid.

Chris Hayes probably isn't disappointed that the Woodstock gala is off, because as he so modestly confided to the Times, his life already is an "Unceasing Festival of Impatience."

Who needs Woodstock-era hallucinogens when, between waking up to Twitter, spewing Russophobia, and then being chauffeured all the way back in Ulster County, he is a natural "brain-dead mess?" Just like Woodstock itself, Hayes is a self-avowed Brand, and proud of it. It's what the corporate journalism market is all about.

But despite the announced cancellation, the Locals are having a lot of trouble adjusting to the news that the big city money and talent will not be flowing into this depressed area after all. They vow that the Show Must Go On --  Jay-Z or no Jay-Z. The event's organizer denies outright that it's been canceled.

“We are committed to ensuring that the 50th Anniversary of Woodstock is marked with a festival deserving of its iconic name and place in American history and culture," (Michael)Lang said in a statement via Woodstock Ventures. "Although our financial partner is withdrawing, we will of course be continuing with the planning of the festival and intend to bring on new partners. We would like to acknowledge the State of New York and Schuyler County for all of their hard work and support.
"The bottom line is, there is going to be a Woodstock 50th Anniversary Festival, as there must be, and it’s going to be a blast.”

Since the performers have already been paid, the ethical thing might be for them to just show up, at no charge to the locals, and give the local economy a boost.

Meanwhile, New York state politicians are feeling the outrage because The Simpsons cartoon show mocked the horrific results of four decades of extreme neoliberal policies, birthed right down there on Wall Street when bond vigilantes imposed austerity on the working class, and the oligarchs began taking over the city, state, nation and the whole world. It is embarrassing for them when the Empire State's "ghost towns and crumbling infrastructure" are not hidden from public view, as they usually are by MSNBC, Fox,CNN and the New York Times.

“We’re headed to the one place that can never decline because it was never that great: upstate New York,” Homer says as the Simpson family heads to Niagara Falls.
During the trip, a tractor-trailer is seen swallowed by a pothole.
They pass a shut-down Kodak plant in Rochester as people snap selfies.
They also whiz by a leaking water tower in Niskayuna, near Albany.

Repeat after me, folks: Markets, Markets, Markets! 

Don't be shocked or saddened by blighted towns and desperate people who can't afford to go to a rock concert. Be offended instead by a song which scathingly points out that there are thousands of blighted landscapes and millions of desperate people struggling to survive in the richest country on earth. And be very afraid of "the Russians," who are sowing all this damned discord and attacking our beloved democracy.

Meanwhile, New York political leadership is such a brain-dead mess that rather than hang their heads in shame,  the region's tourism industry is issuing an invitation to Simpsons creators and Fox executives to attend the State Fair this August to see for themselves. This computer-generated news narrative captures the essential problem -- the structured inhumanity of neoliberalism --even better than an actual human being could.

Status Joe For the Status Quo

It's official. Joe Biden has finally repurposed his wandering hands into throwing his hat into the presidential ring for what is about the seventh lucky charming time in his career. Let the party-splitting begin in earnest!

The campaign motto I have assigned to him ("Status Joe For the Status Quo") is, I admit, a bit misleading. It might be more proper for Uncle Joe to roar "Status Joe For the Status Quo-Ante!" given that he wants to return us to the Golden Age of Obama. On third thought, Uncle Joe crowing for Ante might remind voters what a groper and sniffer of women and girls he is - and that will never do in this age of #MeToo.

Biden has such a long sordid history of corruption and cruelty that it would take hours to copy and paste all the lists that have thus far been compiled. For a crash course in his depravity, you should read Norman Solomon's excellent synopsis over at Truthdig, which in its own turn, links to several other excellent synopses of Biden's awfulness.

It'll be interesting to see how his primary opponents treat him, given his exalted Status. If they are polite and deferential, if only to show that they are not as mean and petty as Trump,  then beware - especially if it comes from candidates who've conveniently latched on to the progressive agenda.

Even Trump is not acting as overtly nasty as he could be, only taunting Biden as "Sleepy Joe" in a morning tweet. This actually renders Biden hapless and harmless, which is exactly the opposite of the truth about him.

Forget about the Democratic Party dividing itself in two. I think it should be at least a three-way division. A  five or six-way division would be even better, because then collapsing under its own corrupt weight would come sooner rather than later.

 So far, we can probably divide the several dozen or so candidates among those who will shamelessly grovel before the former V.P.;  those who mildly disparage his political history without engaging in the "politics of personal destruction"; and those who take off the gloves and immediately start punching him in his many vulnerable spots. I predict that "moderates" like John Hickenlooper and Pete Buttigieg will be in the first group, Bernie Sanders in the second,  and Elizabeth Warren in the last. She has never been shy about expressing her withering disdain for Uncle Joe, largely because of his authorship of bankruptcy reform legislation. Bernie, on the other hand, is loath to personally attack anybody, except maybe Trump.

There is also a fourth group, one that is thus far occupied only by former President Barack Obama. Cautious and pragmatic as always, he has as much as endorsed Biden without being "seen" to endorse him. To make his choice of Biden known, he used a paid spokeswoman to praise Uncle Joe, sending the additional subtle message that the enlightened women in Obama's orbit are far from disgusted by Biden's roaming hands and overactive nostrils.

“President Obama has long said that selecting Joe Biden as his running mate in 2008 was one of the best decisions he ever made,” Obama spokeswoman Katie Hill said. “He relied on the vice president’s knowledge, insight and judgment throughout both campaigns and the entire presidency. The two forged a special bond over the last 10 years and remain close today.”

Out of sycophantic duty, Politico refers to this glowing endorsement as "cryptic," allowing Obama to be seen as not interfering in the race. O.K. then.

It'll also be interesting to see how Biden's claims to be Obama's heir play out. It's as if septuagenarian Prince Charles suddenly announced he was running for King as his more popular son William's heir, rather than Mum's. It's kind of a back-assward approach, if you ask me.

Then again, I am probably being unfair. Because OBiden is not a father-son relationship, or a son-father relationship. What they're really marketing is a Bro-Bro relationship.

When you're a Status Bro, you can rise above groping women. You can show your good intentions by gripping, and being gripped by, a fellow Status Bro who has the added benefit of having melted the hearts and minds of millions of liberals on both coasts. Regaling us with eight whole years' worth of professional, glitzy Bro-marketing also took unwanted attention away from such less appetizing macho behavior as bombing eight countries, drone murders of civilians, and their secret coddling of the Bankster Bros and Corporate Person-Bros.

This is not to say that their Special Relationship was all fun and games and Bro-cheer. OBiden could be serious when the occasion demanded it. Though sitting right next to one another, they very carefully refrained from jokes and PDAs during the private video-streamed execution of Osama bin Laden.

If it had been Trump sitting in that room, you can bet your bottom dollar he would have been crassly tweeting about his killing prowess even as the gruesome murder was happening. He probably would have live-streamed it on Facebook and maybe even superimposed his own MAGA hat-wearing head on a Navy SEAL executioner's body. Obama had the good sense to restrict his own involvement to one still photo, showing him dressed in a tasteful casual-chic golf shirt under a windbreaker. Instead of going into all the gory details, he waited many hours before donning suit and tie and maturely giving the Nation a sanitized, if not downright false, version of how "justice" had finally been done. 

That left the Bro-Joe side of the duo free to incessantly and trumpily bellow at re-election campaign rallies: "We killed Bin Laden and General Motors is Alive!" without ever mentioning that the investors in both enterprises got filthy rich while the actual grunts and auto workers got hammered - in wallet, in body, in mind, and in soul.

As Biden intoned today in the video announcement of his "Let's Go With Joe!" campaign:

"We are in the battle for the soul of this nation. I believe history will look back on four years of this president and all he embraces as an aberrant moment in time. But if we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation, who we are, and I cannot stand by and watch that happen.”

So I guess impeachment is not gonna happen. Removal of Trump on grounds of obstructing justice would obstruct Uncle Joe from battling aberrant moments. He and his Golden Pitchforks constituency cannot simply stand by and watch Congress perform its sworn Constitutional duty. 

Uncle Joe wants to succeed where Robert Mueller passive-aggressively failed. He wants to advance from mere Status Bro status and market himself as the latest Father of Our Country. 

O.K. then.

Kirstjen Nielsen Enters New York Times Halfway House

If you kidnapped, caged and misplaced thousands of immigrant children and were still fired for not being "tough enough," the New York Times will help to rehabilitate you and maybe even salvage your moribund Deep State career.

But there's a catch. First, you must anonymously portray your former boss, President Donald Trump, as a Putin stooge and wimpy enabler and paranoid denier of an alleged continuing Russian attack on our Democracy. You must also declare yourself a loyal Russophobe in good standing in order keep the Russiagate fairy tale alive.

The Times will then portray you as a courageous public official who tried to sound the Russian alarm in the last harrowing months of your tenure, only to be silenced by Trump's gatekeepers. But undaunted, you then bravely went behind his back and formed a secret working group to valiantly defend our nation against Russian meddling. You had the guts to direct the full strength of the World's Only Remaining Superpower against a Russian troll farm which had spent $100,000 to place the cheesy Facebook ads which miraculously swung the 2016 election away from Hillary Clinton. The estimated $5 billion worth of free advertising for broadcasts of Trump's campaign rallies by United States cable TV outlets pales in comparison.

In exchange for this "whistle-blowing," the Times will never once, in its "breaking news" article, mention your grisly recent past as the Homeland Security secretary who willingly followed Trump's orders and ripped thousands of migrant children right out of their parents' arms at the border. The newspaper will never mention that outraged liberals have urged corporations and media outlets never, ever to give Kirstjen Nielsen another job or another platform - not only because she imprisoned kids, but because she did such a lousy job keeping track of the kids she deported or transferred, and that their whereabouts still are unknown and many will probably be lost forever.

It was only a few short weeks ago that Times itself had joined full-throatedly in the anti-Nielsen chorus. "Her role in terrorizing children should make her a permanent pariah," wrote columnist Michelle Goldberg.

But with their Russiagate narrative now in tatters, it might be in the best interests of the lucrative franchise investors to forgive and forget in a huge hurry. The Times will even allow you, Kirstjen Nielson, to modestly both protect and aggrandize yourself by sourcing you only as "a former top administration official." And five of its big-name reporters will speak to another four anonymous current officials to lend further alleged credence to the yarn.

As blatant propaganda goes, the piece is a classic of the genre. It is so off-the-wall, in fact, that as of this writing it was not even prominently featured, as most of these "scoops" are, at the top of the digital homepage. Maybe it's because even the editors were mildly nauseated by the globs of whipped cream on the top of the confection. The prose is so breathless, it leaves you dizzy.

An example:

Ms. Nielsen left the Department of Homeland Security early this month after a tumultuous 16-month tenure and tensions with the White House. Officials said she had become increasingly concerned about Russia’s continued activity in the United States during and after the 2018 midterm elections — ranging from its search for new techniques to divide Americans using social media, to experiments by hackers, to rerouting internet traffic and infiltrating power grids.

The Times does not mention that the Washington Post report of a Russian attempt to hack the Vermont power grid was almost immediately retracted, because it wasn't true.

After allegedly being ordered by Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney never to discuss Russian malfeasance in Trump's presence, lest he erupt in paranoid rage, Nielsen dished to the Times (anonymously) that she agonized about how Russians were gathering for the big attack and how she was rendered powerless to do anything about it. She seemingly forgot all about the kids she was snatching and caging at the time - as has the Times in its rehab of a puff piece. It's like the child abuse never even happened. 

The only thing we have to fear is not a near-fascist form of government within our own borders and the worst wealth inequality in recent history, but that "Russians" are sowing dissent and threatening our free and fair elections. If it weren't for those damned Russians, people would still believe in the American Dream. Because plucky patriotic child kidnapper Kirstjen Nielsen was thwarted in her efforts, the Times continues,

the issue did not gain the urgency or widespread attention that a president can command. And it meant that many Americans remain unaware of the latest versions of Russian interference.

As Robert Mueller III himself acknowledged in his report on Russian meddling, just because he could not provide evidence of terrible things does not mean that the evidence does not exist, somewhere out there.  In other words, just because you can't prove a negative doesn't mean the allegations can't keep shambling along like a zombie that refuses to completely die.

While American intelligence agencies have warned of the dangers of new influence campaigns penetrating the 2020 elections, Mr. Trump and those closest to him have maintained that the effects of Russia’s interference in 2016 was overblown.
“You look at what Russia did — you know, buying some Facebook ads to try to sow dissent and do it — and it’s a terrible thing,” Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, said on Tuesday during an interview at the Time 100 Summit in New York.
“But I think the investigations, and all of the speculation that’s happened for the last two years, has had a much harsher impact on our democracy than a couple of Facebook ads,” he said.

When a corporate media outlet like the Times wants to bury the truth, they go to some of the most mistrusted public figures in America to elicit the truthful quotes they wish to debunk. So rather than turn to respected journalists like Aaron Mate, Stephen Cohen, Chris Hedges, Glenn Greenwald and other so-called "Russoskeptics" for insight, they go to Jared Kushner of all people.. People hate this career grifter and slumlord so much that even when he does speak the truth - that the Russiagate propaganda franchise is far more dangerous, given the nuclear powers involved, than any alleged "meddling" - that they will discount anything he says out of hand.

Although Barack Obama also faces renewed criticism for not taking Russian meddling seriously enough, the Times also tries to rehabilitate his reputation by going to some of his former national security advisers for confirmation that Trump is even worse - despite his recent warning to Putin to get out of "his" Venezuela, and his administration's increased verbal threats and economic sanctions against Russia.

It's almost as if the Times and other investors in the Russiagate franchise want Trump to be re-elected, or at least are unwittingly handing him re-election. It seems that they'll say anything to divert a restive population's attention from the country's leftward bent and overwhelming voter enthusiasm for progressive policy proposals like Medicare For All and debt-free higher education.

The first Cold War, beginning in the 50s, set the stage for reversal of FDR's "socialist" New Deal by instilling fear of socialist Russia in people. Perhaps Cold War 2.0 can recapture the magic and complete the job. 

Ask not what your country is doing to others. Ask what others are doing to your country... even though it really isn't "your" country, and democracy is pretty much limited to allowing the news and entertainment consumers of America to vote every two and four years.

As for Kirstjen Nielsen, despite what scolding liberal pundits wrote about her mere weeks ago, look for her to show up on MSNBC or CNN as a regular paid national security contributor and Russia expert any day now. She has taken that all-important first step in her rehabilitation crusade by being an anonymous source for the #Resistance in the pages of the Times. If George W. Bush can be resurrected as a beloved elder statesman by the liberal class despite his epic war crimes, then child-snatcher Nielsen should graduate to corporate forgiveness respectability in record time.

Take a look at the top-rated reader comments on the article. It did its job and evoked the requisite sympathy for Nielsen. She is halfway home in her journey toward forgiveness. The public consent has been duly manufactured.

If Gina Haspel could torture people and destroy video of the torture sessions and still be confirmed by the Senate to head the CIA, who's to say that Nielsen also can't reinvent herself and advance in her own career? After all, if people like John Brennan and James Clapper can parlay their own crimes into talking-head gigs on cable TV, the sky is the absolute limit.

It was Barack Obama himself who famously urged us to "look forward, not back" as he refused to prosecute the "patriots who tortured some folks."

How quickly the bad things that American leaders do slide down the Orwellian memory hole. Maybe Nielsen, her image transformed with the help of the corporate media, can put the nightmare behind her even as thousands of her asylum-seeking victims will never be able to.

The Only Thing Between Trump and the Golden Pitchforks

After two years of urging Democrats to patiently await the results of the Mueller investigation before even thinking about impeachment, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi moved the goalposts on Monday.

As she sees it, the report is only a prelude. It is merely a template, or book of clues which Congress must carefully examine in order to finally arrive at The Truth. So much for Robert Mueller III being the avenger and final arbiter of the fate of Donald Trump.

It's almost as though Pelosi is pulling an Obama, who back in 2009 told a group of nervous Wall Street bankers that "I am the only thing standing between you and the pitchforks," tacitly assuring them that they would not face criminal prosecution under his benevolent watch.

Nancy Pelosi, the most powerful Democrat in the land, is the only thing standing between a blustery and very paranoid Trump and the golden pitchforks of the liberal pundit and political class, more and more of whom are demanding that impeachment proceedings begin. This is especially true of those running for president and who are in dire need of fuel to fire up the voters. Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris have yet to catch fire in the polls, and are among the impeachment advocates. Of course, since they sit in the Senate, and it's the House that has to get the ball rolling, their calls for impeachment require no further effort or political capital on their part.

As for Pelosi, her neoliberal bipartisan agenda trumps bringing Trump to any form of justice. For starters, she is anxious to get the Trump-backed corporations and the Democratic Party-backed corporations together in a closed room to arbitrate drug prices without any input from the actual House of Representatives. A drawn-out impeachment process would just take all the energy away from enriching the oligarchy in the bipartisan manner to which it has become accustomed.

And since Pelosi had also refused to bring George W. Bush to justice for his illegal torture and surveillance programs, and for lying us into a war that killed, maimed or displaced millions of people, bringing Trump to justice for playing a mob boss and thwarting the Mueller investigation would seem kind of petty, wouldn't it? This is especially true since Pelosi herself was secretly briefed on Bush's torture program in 2003, and did nothing to expose or stop it.

And that would make her seem kind of complicit in war crimes, wouldn't it?

Well, not according to Pelosi. She said she was only following the secrecy rules. She is no Chelsea Manning-style whistleblower. The fact that Republicans attacked her on the torture issue did the bipartisan trick, too: it brought loyal Democrats to her immediate defense, just as the Democratic "witch-hunt" against Trump brings the GOP to his immediate defense.

Unaccountability is built right into the permanent American power structure. The rulers rely on the Constitution and other arcane rules whenever it's convenient, not because it's right. When it's not convenient, then they don't. That is the main function of the Duopoly: theatrics and grandstanding in public, and disdaining the public good and the public's wishes in private.

Fast-forward to 2019.

Politico reports:

"We can investigate Trump without drafting articles," she said during a call with House Democrats.... We aren't going to go faster, we are going to go as fast as the facts take us."

"It is also important to know that the facts regarding holding the President accountable can be gained outside of impeachment hearings," she wrote earlier Monday afternoon in a letter to House Democrats.

This should throw cold water on the continuing hysterical insistence by the Golden Pitchforks crowd that Donald Trump is a secret Russian agent and guilty of treason. I don't think that even Nancy Pelosi has reached the level of corruption that would allow her to desultorily hunt for facts about how, exactly, Vladimir Putin is actively ruling our country and ruining our democracy.

Her inaction should be all the proof the Russophobes need to relinquish their fantasies once and for all. But now that they've created their own alternate reality, inconsistencies and plot-holes are so easy to ignore. The play is the thing, as Shakespeare once observed.

Therefore, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, typical of the Golden Pitchforkers of the Plutocracy, writes:

So all the “fake news” was true. A hostile foreign power intervened in the presidential election, hoping to install Donald Trump in the White House. The Trump campaign was aware of this intervention and welcomed it. And once in power, Trump tried to block any inquiry into what happened.
Never mind attempts to spin this story as somehow not meeting some definitions of collusion or obstruction of justice. The fact is that the occupant of the White House betrayed his country. And the question everyone is asking is, what will Democrats do about it?
But notice that the question is only about Democrats. Everyone (correctly) takes it as a given that Republicans will do nothing. Why?

Translation: We will keep spinning the Russiagate fairy tale and foist all the blame for the Democrats' failure to hold Trump accountable for "treason" on the usual GOP suspects, who do not believe in "American Values." This is like a prosecutor who refuses to indict a suspect because he doesn't have an ironclad guarantee of a conviction. It's akin to the Obama administration refusing to prosecute Wall Street bankers because it is too complicated and institutions must never be allowed to fail. 

It is cowardice and complicity,and yes, it is obstruction of justice in its own right. It is so much easier to accuse one side of the Duopoly of not adhering to "American values." It saves the corporate Resistance the trouble of examining their own consciences and acknowledging their own roles (2016 Bernie Buzzkill) in enabling the election of Trump.

These Democratic pitchforks come custom-equipped with nice, soft protective cushions over their shiny, well-oiled tines. Liberals come to scare and enrage Trump, and to be ostentatiously disgusted by him. They don't want to really hurt him. He is too valuable a commodity and diverting media personality.

My comment on Krugman (held by the newspaper's censors for 10 hours prior to publication):

If Speaker Pelosi believed that Trump is a traitor to his country, she'd be pushing impeachment. She's averse to it because she knows Trump is just your ordinary homegrown mobster who's "not worth it."

 She thinks it's safer to run out the clock till Election Day. as we're regaled with a steady procession of piecemeal investigations and subpoenas that Trump will (true to form) obstruct every step of the way.

Enough of Russiagate. It feeds his paranoia. He used his campaign as a marketing opportunity, and dealing with the Russian mob was just one of his many scams.

 Where's the corporate media outrage over his veto of the congressional bill to stop the US-enabled genocide in Yemen? Where's the angst over the US meddling and attempted coup in Venezuela, or his economic assault on Iran, or his continued caging of refugee children at the border?

As for the GOP, when did they ever "believe in" anything, except serving their paymasters? They're not scared of the corporate Dems, who serve their own paymasters. They fear only true progressives like Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren - who, to her great credit, was the first liberal senator to utter the "I" word.

 Republicans win because they co-opt populism in the service of elitism. Trump's way too skilled a comic diversion to relinquish. Add to him the hucksters of the Evangelical "Greed is God" cult, and they haven't got a qualm in the world. Ethics? What ethics?

Speaking of ethics, lack of same is very much a bipartisan affair. 

Pelosi used the same language of collegiality and cooperation in 2006, when widespread public antiwar sentiment cost Bush the lower House. She grotesquely equated justice with pettiness. In her world, it's always better to ostentatiously extend olive branches to war criminals and forget about the war dead and the trillions of wasted dollars.

As the New York Times reported, 

She said the GOP, which frequently excluded Democrats from conference committee hearings and often blocked attempts to introduce amendments, would not suffer similar treatment.
“Democrats pledge civility and bipartisanship in the conduct of the work here and we pledge partnerships with Congress and the Republicans in Congress, and the president — not partisanship.”
She also extended an olive branch to Bush on the war in Iraq, saying she plans to work with him on a new plan but will not support the current strategy and supports beginning redeployment of troops by the end of the year.
Pelosi also said she supports the idea of a bipartisan summit on the war.
“We know, ‘stay the course,’ is not the way,” Pelosi said.
Pelosi said she received a brief, early-morning call from Bush, who invited her to lunch on Thursday.
“We both expressed our wish to work in a bipartisan way for the benefit of the American people.”

She mildly scolded Bush for his authoritarian language the same way that she now mildly scolds Trump for his. It's not even Nerf-brand toy pitchforks that Nancy Pelosi wields. It's a few slimy strands of overcooked spaghetti.  

When she keeps repeating that her goal is to benefit "the American People," her definition of people is the United States Corporate Empire, limited to the very rich, the very militaristic and the very interconnected.

Here's another response to Krugman's claim that Republicans have no American values. This one was written by my alter ego, "Nicky Sardo," and also held overnight by censors: (many "regular" commenters besides me have been similarly and regularly exiled. In keeping with the Unaccountability Code of Values adopted by the American ruling class and their media propagandists, the Times ascribes its censorship practices to the vagaries of a top-secret algorithm.)

There is at least one American Value that the Republicans sincerely believe in. And that is the value of the almighty dollar. Billions and billions of them, to be precise, all parked tax-free in the pockets of a few tycoons who own as much wealth as the bottom half of the population combined.

 They also believe in vote suppression, particularly in Southern states with majority Black populations. They accomplish this with their Unholy Trinity dogma: voter ID laws; incarcerating record numbers of Black people and then denying them suffrage based upon their convictions; and gerrymandering.

  They also believe in denying poor white and black and brown people a decent education. Trump himself once boasted that he "loves the uneducated." Because if you keep people down long enough, they'll vote for Republicans out of ignorance, fear, desperation, resentment of "the other" - or they'll be too broke, apathetic, sick or disgusted to even bother to vote at all. And failure to vote is usually a default vote for a Republican, unfortunately.

 Whether Trump is an actual traitor is beside the point at this point, because Americans have been shafted by unfettered neoliberal capitalism for decades now. Forget about Putin and the Russians. We have the Kochs, the Adelsons, the Mercers, the Wall Street banks, the consolidated media spewing corporate propaganda and rich men's wars at us 24/7. The fact that they still invite us, even beg us, to vote is proof that democracy is pretty much a delusion.

The Eternal Fairy Tale of Russiagate

Since many of humanity's most enduring myths and legends are thought to have their origin in humanity itself, we can't expect the Russiagate saga to die any time soon either. It makes lots of money, spinning straw into gold for franchise owners and investors by the hour, by the month, by the Thousand and One Nights and A Night.

 It also seems to fill a great psychological need for the spinners, who still quaintly describe themselves as journalists. Were it not for the fact that their military/surveillance state-serving narrative edges us ever closer to confrontation with a nuclear-powered Russia, among other less-weaponized sovereign nations, I'd just say let them have their delusional fun while they can.

I haven't yet read the whole Mueller report, not even close - but I have glanced at the various interpretations of it. Whenever I see a headline with the words "Ten Things You Need To Know About the Mueller Report Right Now!" or " Fifty-Two Takeaways From the Mueller Report," my psyche goes into self-protective shutdown mode. I search in vain for other interesting or threatening things to learn about, such as Trump's barely-noticed veto of the Congressional resolution to stop the US-enabled Saudi genocide of Yemenis.

So it's mainly been through some magical process of osmosis that  I've absorbed the gist of Mueller's pricey report. To wit:

Richard Nixon has been vindicated!  Anything is legal if you're president. To paraphrase Donald Trump himself, when you're a president, you can do anything. You can grab the country by the short hairs and it's gonna let you. Mueller, who has sadly devolved from Father of Our Country into Absentee Deadbeat Dad, apparently as much as admitted that Trump cannot be prosecuted for obstruction of justice because presidents can obstruct justice all they want. And if they can act stupid or paranoid or emotional or spoiled rotten while they're at it, it's all the better for them. Forgive them, for they know not what they do. (I knew there was a reason that the report was released on Maundy Thursday, a/k/a the Last Supper eve of the crucifixion.)

Plus, as Zephyr Teachout lays out in Corruption in America, when you're an oligarch, you can do anything, such as buying Congress and the Supreme Court and changing the corruption laws in America. Under our current system of legalized crime, the only thing that could get Trump prosecuted is his being caught personally accepting a bag full of cash in exchange for a veto or an executive order.

This legal restriction of corruption to quid pro quo, Teachout writes, was codified by the Citizens United and McCutcheon vs FEC Supreme Court decisions, which dictated that political donations are protected political speech, and not bribery. The redefinition narrows the scope of political corruption only to explicit deals. 

"It reclassifies influence-seeking as normal and desirable political behavior. It purportedly avoids difficult problems of definition. It attempts to wring the moral content out of the term corruption and tell a story about corruption that is consistent with a world populated by self-interested actors."

Since liberal pundits and politicians cannot reverse this process, absent a social democratic revolution (the prospect of which they loathe even more than they pretend to loathe Trump) they must revert back to fairy tale mode. The money and the arms must continue to flow to the military-industrial complex and its Wall Street/Silicon Valley investors. An Enemy Outside which "sows dissent" must always be conjured up to keep the domestic populism down. Therefore, they will keep spinning their propaganda straw into gold while there is still a viable world and a well-appointed newsroom or broadcast studio to spin it in.

So what else, besides six and seven figure salaries, explains the lasting appeal of the Russiagate folklore franchise to careerist news personalities and stenographers?

  The late fairy tale interpreter and Jungian psychologist Marie-Louise von Franz gives us a clue about what could be going on in their heads and those of their fans:

Actually. you can interpret a myth or fairy tale with any of the four functions of consciousness. The thinking type will point out the structure and the way in which all the motifs connect. The feeling type will put them in a value order (a hierarchy of values) which is also completely rational. With the feeling function, a good and complete fairy tale interpretation can be made. The sensation type will just look at the symbols and amplify them. The intuitive will see the whole package in its oneness, so to speak; he will be most gifted in showing that the whole fairy tale is not a discursive story but is really one message, split up into many facets. The more you have differentiated your functions, the better you can interpret because you must circumambulate a story as much as possible with all four functions. The more you have developed and obtained the use of more conscious functions, the better and more colorful your interpretation will be.

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, the best-known spinner of the nightly Russiagate fables, is not about to give up her Scheherazade role. She's made a fortune and a career out of connecting the dots on charts to explain how various low-level or innocuous meetings of Trump operatives with Russian operatives have amounted to one great overriding plot, with the grand overarching motif that Donald Trump is a Putin agent. The more details and dot-connections she can offer, the more believable that she makes her yarn become.

 Her "intellectual" approach feeds into the competing feelings of inchoate Trump-hatred and powerlessness within the psyches of her audience of millions. We know, we just intuitively know, that the foreign agency of Trump must be true, especially when the message is constantly being split up and spun off among so many different expert storytellers in our six major media conglomerates. The more that the story can go round and round (circumambulation) the truer it becomes, and the more colorful the embellishments that can be added all the time. It gets so complicated that the plot holes and even the original plot gets fuzzy with time. It is a continuous closed feedback loop. And like climate change itself, it is proving very hard to stop, now that it has achieved a life of its own.

Robert S Mueller III, loyal establishment player that he is, is playing right along with the Russiagate franchise.The contrived existential threat of Putin-meddling is in the intro to his report. He was hired for a specific reason. Trump, painted by the media and now by Mueller as a con man and a stooge, might have dodged a personal bullet, but the country has not. The country, with at least 800 military outposts around the world still must be taught to fear a country with a grand total of nine. 

Be afraid, be thrilled, be very afraid, be very thrilled. Because those Russian internet trolls who planted a couple hundred Facebook ads and walked around the United States wearing Trump masks to fake protest rallies are not only still at large, they are lurking under the Freedom Bridge to US Election Nirvana. They are plotting, right now and as Rachel Maddow speaks, to pull you down and drown you on your way to vote in 2020.